As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,539,840 entitled “MICROWAVE OVEN HAING A TOASTER” and Japanese Patent No. 3271630 entitled “MICROWAVE OVEN WITH TOASTER”, a conventional toaster-cum-microwave (or microwave oven/toaster combination) basically includes a microwave oven section for cooking food in a heating chamber by means of microwave and a toaster section for toasting a bread product in a toasting chamber by means of Joule's heat.
Recently, such conventional toaster-cum-microwave oven is gaining popularity for its versatility and convenience. Since, however, such conventional toaster-cum-microwave oven is kind of an apparatus made by combining a freestanding toaster with a microwave oven, it inherently has the same kind of problem that a freestanding toaster also suffers from. That is, the bread product is over-toasted owing to residual heat left in the toasting chamber from previous toast batches in case the conventional toaster-cum-microwave oven is operated consecutively in a short interval. For example, the conventional toaster-cum-microwave toasts slices of bread as medium, dark and burnt for color selection (or toasting time selection) of light, medium and dark, respectively.